Boricua history with a Bad Bunny twist

Not to brag, but Bad Bunny and I have the same taste in books.

When I began exploring the topic of Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia in my last column, one of the first people I knew I needed to speak with was historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, author of Puerto Rico: A National History.

Published last year and now out in paperback, the book is a deep and highly readable account of the island. Think part history, part personal reflection, and part tribute to a place shaped by colonization but defined by resilience, pride, and resistance.

Mi gente — when San Benito blesses a book, we pay attention.

Reading it, I couldn’t help but think: Now, this is the book I wish I had growing up. This is a book that belongs anywhere people are trying to understand Puerto Rico as more than just a footnote in American history. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to write annual reminders to my willfully ignorant fellow Americans that sí, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and sí, we have been for over a century.

In just over 200 pages (not counting the footnotes and index), Meléndez-Badillo, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, brings 500 years of Puerto Rican history to life through the stories of people — including his own family — who have shaped the island’s identity, on and off its shores.

And in a delicious crossover between academia and pop culture, the book — available in English and Spanish — caught the attention of Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny, whose team enlisted Meléndez-Badillo to help craft historical narratives for his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos.

Mi gente — when San Benito blesses a book, we pay attention.

Here are some highlights from my conversation with the author.

It’s “a provocation,” to help clarify Puerto Rico’s political status and its complex national identity, Meléndez-Badillo told me when we spoke recently. The sad fact is that many people don’t understand Puerto Rico’s political status: Is it a commonwealth? Is it a sovereign nation? Is it a colony? (Hence, my recurring Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens! columns.)

“One of the arguments that I wanted to make in the book is that although Puerto Ricans lack a sovereign nation state, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood throughout time,” he said. “And so it’s a way of affirming our national identity in the face of colonialism.”

This wasn’t the book Meléndez-Badillo, 39, planned on writing, at least not this early in his career. But when his editor pitched the idea of a general history of Puerto Rico during the pandemic, he accepted the challenge. As he thought about the project, he saw “the need for a new approach to Puerto Rican history.” One that was more “attentive to marginalized communities” — from “runaway enslaved people and maroon Indigenous communities” to the more contemporary queer, Black, and working classes.

This approach is why he started his book, not with a statesman, but with his grandparents, “people who only made it to fourth and sixth grade, but who taught me everything I know.” (Spoiler alert: I’m deliberately not going to spoil this read for you with too many details.)

What emerged, Meléndez-Badillo said, is a “new narrative of the archipelago, through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges Puerto Ricans face.” In short, an overarching history from pre-Columbian times to Bad Bunny.

¡Sí! Now prepare to stan: Bad Bunny wanted a strong historical component to his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which he’s called his most Puerto Rican record to date.

Enter Meléndez-Badillo, who got a call from Team BB, asking him to create 17 YouTube visualizers — one for each track — that weave in Puerto Rican history en español.

The visuals, which collectively have racked up well over 400 million views, span from the creation of the first Puerto Rican flag by revolutionary exiles in New York (featured in the opening track “Nuevayol”) to the island’s modern-day dependency on foreign capital (explored in “La Mudanza”).

The project has been received “in ways that I never, ever imagined,” Meléndez-Badillo said, adding that people often send him pictures of themselves dancing at clubs with the visualizers in the background.

There’s no doubt, the author said, that there’s “a deep thirst and an urgent need for Puerto Rican history.” And in many ways, Bad Bunny’s music embodies that hunger — not just for reclaiming Puerto Rico’s past and culture, but for affirming the core symbols of Puerto Rican identity. El Conejo Malo is, in his unique way, “democratizing access to that history, one track at a time.” In the process, he’s making “forgotten” history (and Meléndez-Badillo) cool.

Throughout our 45-minute conversation, Meléndez-Badillo returned to what he called “a deliberate policy of forgetting — especially in the United States.” This, he emphasized, is no accident.

“It’s politics of erasure,” from the 1511 insurrection against Spanish colonial rule, to the establishment of the commonwealth in 1952, to Hurricane Maria in 2017 and beyond. We know this to be true: Our stories are “intentionally disappeared or diminished” — sometimes, lest we ever forget, with nothing more than a dismissive toss of a roll of paper towels.

“Citizenship doesn’t guarantee equality,” Meléndez-Badillo told me. “We’re still marginalized in political spaces and circles of power — even though we have the numbers.”

As I wrote in my last column, Latinos make up 16% of Philadelphia’s population. We’re the largest Hispanic group in town, and Philly’s home to the second-largest Puerto Rican population in a U.S. city, after New York. And yet, we remain mostly invisible.

When I asked Meléndez-Badillo how that could change, he had less of a definitive answer than a determined hope.

His book, he explained, is meant to remind us that “understanding our past — what we’ve built but also what’s been taken from us — is key to understanding where we are now and where we’re going.”

That question matters not only in the archipelago, he said, but in Philly, in New York, and all the big cities and small towns where Puerto Ricans have settled. In short: History can be a tool to mobilize us.

“I know this is really romantic and idealistic, but I do hope that history can offer us tools to start building that power for our communities,” he told me.

I’ve said this before, but it comes up in almost every conversation I have about Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican-ness — the impostor syndrome that creeps in for some of us who weren’t born on the island.

So when Meléndez-Badillo spoke about an expanding definition of what it means to be Puerto Rican, how “our identities have always been in flux,” I had to ask: Does that mean those of us who weren’t born and raised there, those of us who don’t share a language (at least one spoken fluently), are still fully Puerto Rican?

“Absolutely,” he said. “Puerto Rican-ness doesn’t belong only to those who live on the archipelago. It’s much more than where you’re born or raised — it’s about a sense of belonging to the broader Puerto Rican culture. There are nearly nine million Puerto Ricans living abroad, compared to 3.1 million on the island — and that number keeps shrinking. Those nine million are just as Puerto Rican. And that’s my point: Puerto Rican-ness is being forged not only in San Juan, but also in Kissimmee, and in Milwaukee …”

And right here in Philly.